VIRTUAL: Livable Cities – New York

Abstract

Modern western cities, such as Manhattan, will soon face some of the issues already identified in old western cities, namely population aging, increased obesity rate, increased sedentary lifestyle, and the consequent low mobility, etc. These factors make it urgent for city management to promote policies that prevent these trends from aggravating. It is, therefore, necessary to seek and develop innovative approaches, which encourage walkability, in order to achieve Sustainable Cities and Communities Goals (SDG11). One possible approach could be the opening of passages through the interior of the blocks connecting the streets that limit these blocks, inspired by the particular cases of some cities (e.g. Prague, Milan, Paris, Juíz de Fora, etc.). In theory, the idea is to approximate the Manhattan distance to the Euclidean distance between two points. These passages are opened when buildings are rehabilitated or existing buildings are replaced by others that should have a multiplicity of characteristics that promote walkability in the city, or at least do not reduce it (Vieira, 2018; Vieira & Ribeiro, 2019). Following previous studies in an old western city such as Lisbon (Ribeiro et al. 2021, 2022), this paper will test, using Space Syntax and statistical analysis, the effect of opening passages/galleries in super blocks concerning urban walkability, taking Manhattan as an example. The results of this effect are compared in both western cities, with quite different block scales. The results show that opening passages in a city with super blocks has a greater impact on urban walkability.